In less than 10 days, countries from around the planet will come together in New York for the United Nations Secretary General’s Climate Action Summit. I look forward to representing the Pacific Community (SPC) at this important event, and throughout “Action Week” during the upcoming UN General Assembly.

Cameron Diver

The interconnections and synergies between major issues of global concern and the key role multilateralism and international cooperation can play in helping tackle these challenges are illustrated by the agenda of the week from 23 to 27 September. Underpinned by the Sustainable Development Goals, each of the high-level summits will focus on commitments to accelerate action across climate change, enhance efforts to secure healthy, peaceful and prosperous lives for all, mobilise sufficient financing to realise the 2030 Agenda and address the specific issues and vulnerabilities of small island developing states.

The week of summits kicks off with a focus on climate action. And this is, in my mind, highly appropriate. The multiplier effect of climate change undermines our efforts to achieve the sustainable development goals, it increases the challenges of biodiversity conservation and sustainable use, it intensifies competition and the potential for conflict around natural resources and it poses the single greatest existential threat to the lives and livelihoods of millions of people around the globe. From where I stand, the science on climate change is clear. To take only these examples, the IPCC Special Reports on the impacts of global warming of 1.5° above pre-industrial levels and climate change, desertification, land degradation, sustainable land management, food security and greenhouse gas fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems provide us with the most robust, high quality evidence base to understand the significant negative impact climate change is already having on our natural environment, on the wellbeing of people, ecosystems, flora and fauna and the massive and potentially irreversible consequences of inaction. As regards our ocean, the upcoming Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate is likely to confirm what the islands of the Blue Pacific continent, and others whose cultures, traditions and livelihoods are deeply attached to the ocean, have already sensed: the climate crisis is a real and present threat to ocean and coastal ecosystems and the human communities that depend on them.

The stakes are high, but where there is a threat there is also an opportunity. If we act now, there is still have time effectively to tackle the climate crisis! To put it simply: ambition without action is insufficient and simply not an option. SPC is committed to working with our Member States, international and regional partners to translate climate ambition into tangible climate action, for both mitigation and adaptation. The benefits could be huge, with the Global Commission on Adaptation estimating that investing $1.8 trillion in climate adaptation globally in just five areas from 2020 to 2030 could generate $7.1 trillion in total net benefits. We are also convinced that we must collectively harness the synergies between, for example, climate and the ocean, biodiversity, health, security, economic development, food systems, land use, gender and many other development areas to fully exploit the potential of the SDGs and ensure that future pathways to sustainable development are integrated, inclusive, nature-friendly, climate-informed and resilient. SPC is already implementing this approach with its Members and partners. One illustration is our EU funded PROTEGE project, whose intended outcomes include a transition to sustainable integrated agriculture and sound forestry resource management; sustainable fisheries and aquaculture management that is integrated in and adapted to island economies; sustainable integrated water resource management; and invasive alien species control, all against a backdrop of climate-change hazards that require ecosystem and biodiversity protection, resilience and restoration.

As was recently remarked to me at the Green Climate Fund Global Programming Conference in Korea: “we already know what we must do. We need to stop talking and start doing”. It is my sincere hope that “Action Week” in New York will indeed be a turning point for “doing”; a catalyst for firm, measurable commitments to tangible actions that match the level of ambition already expressed to address the climate crisis and the multiple development challenges that remain as we approach the final decade of the 2030 Agenda. If we do not translate ambition into action, we will fail ourselves, we will fail future generations and we will fail our planet. If, however, we take up the challenge and take sustained, coordinated and integrated action, we can win the battle against climate change, create new and innovative opportunities for development, deliver on the promise of the Global Goals and trace a positive pathway to new era of resilient and sustainable development. High hopes indeed…

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/translating-ambition-action-high-hopes-united-nations-action-week/feed/0Ministers Call for Coalition to scale up land restoration massively worldwidehttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/ministers-call-coalition-scale-land-restoration-massively-worldwide/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=ministers-call-coalition-scale-land-restoration-massively-worldwide
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/ministers-call-coalition-scale-land-restoration-massively-worldwide/#respondWed, 11 Sep 2019 18:34:07 +0000UNCCD Press Releasehttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=1632351. On the road to the Climate Action Summit, the Minister of Environment, Forest and Climate Change of India and President of COP14, His Excellency Mr. Prakash Javedkar, and the United Nations Deputy Secretary-General, Her Excellency Ms. Amina J. Mohammed, hosted a high-level luncheon on land and climate on 9 September 2019, on the margins […]

1. On the road to the Climate Action Summit, the Minister of Environment, Forest and Climate Change of India and President of COP14, His Excellency Mr. Prakash Javedkar, and the United Nations Deputy Secretary-General, Her Excellency Ms. Amina J. Mohammed, hosted a high-level luncheon on land and climate on 9 September 2019, on the margins of the UNCCD Fourteenth Session of the Conference of the Parties (COP14). The event was co-facilitated by the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

2. During the meeting, participants underscored that land resources are the basis for human health, livelihoods, food security, and for our economic, cultural and spiritual well-being. Some 25 per cent of the world’s land is degraded (IPCC, 2019), affecting the lives of 3.2 billion people, particularly smallholder farmers, those in rural communities and the world’s poorest populations (IPBES, 2018). Women in particular are on the daily frontline struggle to salvage the large area of agricultural land already affected by land degradation. And the stewardship of indigenous peoples is essential to safeguard the world’s remaining biodiversity. All vulnerable groups who depend on sustainable land management and who can contribute to land restoration need our support.

3. Participants welcomed the IPCC’s special report on Climate Change and Land which constitutes the first comprehensive study of the entire land-climate system. As such, they agreed that it is a fundamental contribution to global negotiations on climate change, biodiversity and sustainable land management, and calls for synergies between the Rio Conventions. The report provides a sound basis for ambitious actions contributing to climate change adaptation and mitigation, biodiversity conservation as well as to combat land degradation and enhance food security.

4. Participants stressed that restoring degraded lands and achieving land degradation neutrality (SDG 15.3) provided an integrated solution to increase ecosystems and populations resilience as well as to enhance the capacity of our land for carbon sequestration. Land use must therefore be an integral part of the climate solution, rather than a cause of GHG emissions. This will strengthen biodiversity conservation, increase livelihoods and human security. It will also curb emissions from degrading lands and help close the projected emissions gap between Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and the Paris Agreement objectives. Most importantly, land degradation neutrality will improve the living conditions of affected populations and the health and productivity of their ecosystems.

5. Participants agreed that land restoration will deliver co-benefits to many Sustainable Development Goals and that the three Rio Conventions can actively work together to support restoration activities as an important contribution to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

6. Participants agreed that the critical role of land restoration for climate mitigation and adaptation must be visible. The Climate Action Summit will send a strong political signal for more public funding and private investments to enable land restoration for impact at the scale needed, through gender-responsive, transformative projects and programmes that seek to generate and sustain fundamental and sustainable positive change. Every 1 USD invested in land restoration is expected to generate up to 10 USD in returns for society through more efficient agricultural practices, integrated water management, and vital ecosystem functions (GPFLR, 2018).

7. Participants indicated that time had come to turn the vicious circle between land and climate into a virtuous one by reinforcing the positive elements of the relationship, helping to manage emissions on the one hand and adapting to climate impacts on the other. Participants therefore called for more concerted policy action, more investments, and more capacity to scale up land restoration to achieve land degradation neutrality. They expect the Nature-Based Solutions Coalition to propose concrete and ambitious actions at the Summit.

8. Participants supported the global effort to achieve land degradation neutrality through ambitious initiatives such as the Bonn Challenge target of having at least 350 million hectares of degraded land under active restoration by 2030 and the Great Green Wall for the Sahara and Sahel Initiative. Participants also welcomed the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021-2030 (UN General Assembly resolution 73/284) as a unique opportunity to galvanize political will, increased investments, and action on the ground for land restoration at massive scale across the world.

9. Participants called for the UN Climate Action Summit to be the starting point for the establishment of a coalition of countries, to accelerate massive scaling up of land restoration activities worldwide, and to act as the building block of the UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration (2021–2030). A coalition of active countries could federate and accelerate the achievement of existing ecosystem restoration goals of all into the UN Decade – a decade of action and impact on the ground for the planet, for the people and for prosperity.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/ministers-call-coalition-scale-land-restoration-massively-worldwide/feed/0The Push for Peace-From the Global Village to the Global Neighborhoodhttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/push-peace-global-village-global-neighborhood/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=push-peace-global-village-global-neighborhood
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/push-peace-global-village-global-neighborhood/#respondWed, 11 Sep 2019 17:54:13 +0000Siddharth Chatterjeehttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=163232From the ashes of a tragedy that wiped out almost 90% of the city of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, an institute called the Hiroshima Peacebuilders Center (HPC) rose like a phoenix of hope that is pioneering the creation of a global pool of peacebuilders. It is driven by the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development […]

From the ashes of a tragedy that wiped out almost 90% of the city of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, an institute called the Hiroshima Peacebuilders Center (HPC) rose like a phoenix of hope that is pioneering the creation of a global pool of peacebuilders. It is driven by the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development declaration that “there can be no sustainable development without peace and no peace without sustainable development.”

Hiroshima underwent miraculous post-war reconstruction after World War II, and it epitomizes speed, innovation, technology and efficiency which marks the Japanese character of utter discipline and loyalty to the vision. An architectural and engineering feat of reconstruction.

Today HPC supported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, trains professional peacebuilders to assist war – torn societies and they are doing a remarkable job. I have seen this first hand and I have had the privilege of facilitating two mid-career courses which brings together Japanese and non-Japanese United Nations professionals who work in different conflict affected parts of the world.

The UN Secretary General Mr Antonio Guterres once made a profound remark- “the world is in pieces and we need world peace”. With over 65 million people displaced, due to conflict, instability, climate shocks and sheer degrading poverty, the message from the UN Secretary General is a clarion call to action. Japan has stepped up. In fact, Japan’s pacifist constitution may hold the key to a world free of conflict, violence and instability.

At the HPC, various programmes are being implemented to develop practical knowledge, skills and experience in peacebuilding and development among civilians, an important contribution towards transforming conflict-prone countries into peaceful nations engaged in the pursuit of SDG 16.

Having seen both worlds – as a former combat veteran and later as an international civil servant, where I have been working to bring dignity to people ravaged by war in various countries – I know the importance of such institutions. For instance, the many years of my UN career spent in Somalia, South Sudan Iraq, Darfur, between 1997 to date, will always remain a poignant reminder of the disparate harm that women and children are predisposed to whenever one form or other of humanitarian crisis arises.

With recent technological advances on one hand giving a leg-up, and on the other rolling back progress on the United Nations Charter’s vision of getting the peoples of the world ‘to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbours‘, institutions such as HPC are increasingly needed.

The strings of guilt have continued to pull at the collective global heart after the events of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In subsequent years, the world has drafted the United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as well as numerous treaties and conventions, all seeking to ensure global peace.

By telescoping distance and time, scientific advances have given us the ‘global village’, yet the more people have of things that bring them together, the more they have tended to invent others that divide them.

One such development is the indisputable evidence that all of humanity is vulnerable in current rates of ecological degradation. However, while the web of interdependence continues to thicken, debates about what needs to be done and by whom rages, delaying consensus on remedial action.

The reasons we need citizens to drive global neighbourhood are legion: maintaining peace and order, expanding economic activity, combating pandemic diseases, deterring terrorists and sharing scarce resources are just a few of them.

We cannot have any illusions about the scope of the challenge ahead. As we move towards working with others, clashes between the familiar and the different are expected. Stresses will result from people having to come to terms with new circumstances.

A transformation of the mindset will be a key driver of the triple nexus of peace, security and development as the world seeks to draft a post-conflict agenda. To achieve this, a critical mass of leaders who can push countries to adapt universal norms of good neighborhoods is needed, which is what institutions like HPC are helping to build.

While human survival and resilience against new diseases must depend on scientific discoveries, there must be a part of humanity that checks the temptation to turn those same discoveries into ever more efficient killing machines.

More international institutions that work to create a generation of citizens as the dynamos of the vehicle of peacebuilding need to be established. That one of the leaders towards that vision is a region that carries the scars of the worst devastation caused by war provides inspiration that a moral revolution is possible, even as the scientific revolution continues.

Japan’s former Prime Minster and Nobel laureate Mr. Eisaku Sato once said, “Japan is the only country in the world to have suffered the ravages of atomic bombing. That experience left an indelible mark on the hearts of our people, making them passionately determined to renounce all wars”.

Siddharth Chatterjee is the United Nations Resident Coordinator to Kenya.

Climate change is already altering the face of our planet. Research shows that we need to put all our efforts over the coming decade to limit warming to 1.5°C and mitigate the catastrophic risks posed by increased droughts, floods, and extreme weather events.

But our actions will not be effective if they do not include measures to ensure social justice, equality and a gender perspective. So, how do we integrate gender equality in climate change actions?

The impact of climate change affects women and girls disproportionately due to existing gender inequalities. It also threatens to undermine socio-economic gains made over previous decades.

With limited or no access to land and other resources including finance, technology and information, women and girls suffer more in the aftermath of natural disasters and bear increased burdens in domestic and care work.

Women and girls have also seen their water collection time increased and firewood and fodder collection efforts thwarted in the face of droughts, floods and deforestation, occupying a significant portion of their time that could have been used for their education or leisure.

This is not only theory. For example, women and children accounted for more than 96 per cent of those impacted by the flash floods in Solomon Islands in 2014 and in Myanmar, women accounted for 61 percent of fatalities caused by Cyclone Nargis in 2008.

Women and girls also remain marginalized in decision-making spheres — from the community level to parliaments to international climate negotiations. Global climate finance for mitigation and adaptation programmes remain out of reach for women and girls because of their lack of knowledge and capacity to tap into these resources.

Despite these challenges, women and girls play a critical role in key climate related sectors and have developed adaptation and resilience-building strategies and mitigation techniques, such as driving the demand for renewable energy at the household and community levels for lighting, cooking and productive use solutions that the international community must now support.

Women are holders of traditional farming methods, first responders in crises situations, founders of cooperatives, entrepreneurs of green energy, scientists and inventors, and decision-makers with respect to the use of natural resources.

Women comprise an average of 43 percent of the agricultural work force in developing countries1 and manage 90% of all household water and fuel-wood needs in Africa. Some studies have shown that if women were afforded equal access to productive resources as men, their agricultural outputs would exceed men’s by 7 to 23 percent. It is therefore imperative to embrace and scale-up the initiatives of the 51 per cent of the world’s population.

In recent times, women and girls have used their knowledge and experience to lead in mitigation efforts. From developing apps to track and reduce the carbon emitted as a result of individual consumption, to reducing food by connecting neighbors, cafes, and local shops to share leftover and unsold food 2.

Young women scientists, like South-African teenager Kiara Nirghin, are making a difference in the fight against climate change. They are building on the legacies of women and girls such as Nobel Prize winner Wangari Maathai, who empowered communities to manage their natural resources in a sustainable way.

At the same time, UNDP and UN Women have been collaborating to advance gender equality and women’s leadership on climate change. For example, in Ecuador, the two UN agencies have teamed up with the government to support the inclusion of gender in the country’s climate action plans.

UNDP and UN Women have also collaborated globally to ensure that gender remains a key factor when world leaders make critical decisions on climate change.

If policies and projects take into account women’s particular roles, needs and contributions to climate action and support women’s empowerment, there will be a greater possibility to limit warming to 1.5°C in line with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. We must continue to engage women and women’s organizations, learning from their experiences on the ground to build the evidence for good practices and help replicate more inclusive climate actions.

The UN Secretary-General’s Climate Action Summit in New York on September 23, 2019 is a unique opportunity to elevate at the highest level the need for substantive participation of women and girls in efforts against climate change.

At the Summit, there will be several initiatives put forth to address climate change, including one focusing on gender equality. The initiative recognizes the differential impact of climate change on women and girls, and seeks support for their leadership as a way to make climate actions more effective.

It calls for the rights, differentiated needs and contributions of women and girls to be integrated into all actions, including those related to climate finance, energy, industry and infrastructure. It promotes support for women and girls in developing innovative tools and participating in mitigation and adaptation efforts and calls for accountability by tracking and reporting progress towards achieving these goals.

For climate action to get more traction and be effective, we need a critical mass of Governments and other stakeholders to sign on to the Climate Action Summit’s gender-specific initiative. The world cannot afford to keep limiting the potential of women and girls in shaping climate actions, as all evidence points towards the benefits of their involvement.

There is already interest by United Nations Member States, as shown in the increased integration of gender considerations in their national climate plans, but a broader movement is needed. We need multi-stakeholder partnerships and engage a critical mass of supporters – governments, UN entities, financial mechanisms, and civil society organizations to support the gender-specific initiative of the SG’s Climate Action Summit.

The time for gender-responsive climate action is now.

1 Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), The State of Food and Agriculture: Closing the Gender Gap for Development (Rome: FAO, 2011a).2 Olio, a food-sharing app was founded by women from Sweden, the UK and USA. For more info: https://unfccc.int/climate-action/momentum-for-change/women-for-results/women-leading-a-food-sharing-revolution; One Million Women was founded by a woman in Australia to get one million women to change their lifestyles to mitigate climate change. The group has an app that provides the tools to cut carbon pollution in home energy savings and clean energy options, minimising food waste, reducing over-consumption, investing and divesting (your money) wisely, sustainable fashion, low-impact travel, etc. For more info: https://www.1millionwomen.com.au/

Ulrika Modéer is UNDP’s Assistant Administrator and Director of the Bureau of External Relations and Advocacy, and Anita Bhatia is UN Women’s Deputy Executive Director for Resource Management, Sustainability and Partnerships.

At his speech at the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) summit in Delhi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi emphasised South-South cooperation and technology solutions, but issues of land ownership dog the ongoing negotiations.

As the second week of the UNCCD Conference of Parties (COP) kicked off in Delhi, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi highlighted South-South cooperation and issues of land degradation.

Speaking at the opening ceremony of the high level segment, he said that it was increasingly accepted that climate change impacts were leading to a loss of land, plants and animal species, and that it was causing, “land degradation of various kinds (including) rise of sea levels, wave action, and erratic rainfall and storms”.

All of these issues have a significant impact on India, and other developing countries, and as such, the Prime Minister advocated, “greater South-South cooperation in addressing climate change, biodiversity and land degradation.”

He said India would act both internally and externally on this. Domestically, he said that India was increasing its commitment to restore 21 million hectares of land by 2030 to 26 million hectares, an increase of 5 million hectares. The co-benefit of this would be that it would help create a carbon sink for 2.5-3 billion tonnes of carbon through increased tree cover.

On external action, he said that India was, “happy to help other friendly countries cost-effective satellite and space technologies,” and that it would be creating a Centre for Excellence at the Indian Council for Forestry Research and Education in Dehradun to promote South-South cooperation, where other countries could access technology and training.

Hard questions

Nevertheless, this avoids some of the hard questions that have been dogging the UNCCD COP. Who owns the land? Who is responsible when the land is no longer able to support a livelihood, and a farmer is forced to migrate?

These are not questions anyone thought about when they launched the UNCCD 25 years ago. But since degradation of land due to a variety of reasons precedes desertification, these questions are increasingly worrying policymakers, especially from developing countries. At the ongoing New Delhi summit, the issues have come to the fore, and have divided governments along the lines of developed and developing nations, a process familiar to observers of UN climate negotiations.

Despite Narendra Modi’s speech at the high level segment, these issues remained unresolved, with bureaucrats awaiting instructions from the 100-odd ministers gathered at the Indian capital.

The NGOs who work on farming issues are clear that land degradation cannot be halted unless farmers around the world have guaranteed rights over the land on which they grow food for everyone. This may sound like a no-brainer, but estimates show that globally only around 12% of all farmers can claim legal rights over the land they till. To this, experts would like to add the land held in various forms of community ownership, sometimes by indigenous communities. But few countries have strong laws to protect such ownership.

In the first week of the New Delhi summit, developing country governments have wanted this issue of land tenure being discussed at the UNCCD forum, and developed countries – led by the US delegation – have opposed the inclusion. The industrialised countries say it is an issue of different laws in different countries, and discussing it in the UN is not going to help.

Land tenure

But, with land degradation being inextricably tied up with climate change and biodiversity, the urgency of the situation may force UNCCD to discuss land tenure in this and future meetings, and to come up with possible solutions.

The solutions are not always as straightforward as they may seem, warned UNCCD chief scientist Baron Orr in a conversation with thethirdpole.net. Think of what a farmer – especially a smallholder farmer – is likely to do if offered a high price for land. Most of them are likely to sell, as evidenced by the mushrooming malls, offices and homes all around the current summit venue, which was all farmland just about a decade ago. And what happens to our food supply if this replicated globally?

Land tenure is important to halt degradation because people naturally provide better protection to land they own. But it is not enough. A farmer faced with competitors using chemical fertilisers and pesticides is not going to move to organic farming just because that is better for the soil.

Most farmers cannot afford to do that. They need help, as was seen in India when the state of Sikkim pledged to do only organic farming. Sikkim is a relatively small state – replicating that kind of help on a global or even national scale may need far more money than is available for the purpose, as Orr pointed out.

Farmers being forced to migrate because their farms can no longer support them due to land degradation and climate change is the hottest potato of them all. Developed countries are united in opposing this major “push” factor in migration, insisting that people migrate only due to “pull” factors such as better economic opportunities. Developing countries, especially those from the Sahel belt stretching from the western to the eastern coast of Africa, point to numerous instances where farmers are forced off land gone barren, and insist on this issue being discussed by UNCCD.

Former UNCCD chief Monique Barbut has said almost all Africans trying to move to Europe are doing so due to land degradation and drought. Without putting it in words that strong, current UNCCD chief Ibrahim Thiaw has backed the inclusion of migration in the conference agenda.

As host government and conference president, India may have to use all its diplomatic skills if this knot is to be untied during this summit – an especially tricky manoeuvre because India has consistently refused to accept that immigrants from Bangladesh are entering this country because their farms can no longer support them.

And it is not just migration across countries. At a meeting organised on the sidelines of the summit by local government organisation ICLEI, mayor after mayor got up to say farmers are coming into their cities in increasing numbers due to land degradation and climate change, but they have no budget to provide any housing, water, electricity, roads or any form of livelihood to these millions of immigrants.

Still, developed country delegations insist UNCCD is not the right forum to discuss migration. What all 196 governments and the European Union agree upon in the next day or two remains to be seen.

Human efforts

Prakash Javadekar, India’s Minister of Environment, Forests and Climate Change and the conference president, had said at the opening, “If human actions have created the problems of climate change, land degradation and biodiversity loss, it is the strong intent, technology and intellect that will make (the) difference. It is human efforts that will undo the damage and improve the habitats. We meet here now to ensure that this happens.” This foreshadowed what the Prime Minister said today.

He pointed out that 122 countries, among them Brazil, China, India, Nigeria, Russia and South Africa, which are among the largest and most populous nations on earth, “have agreed to make the Sustainable Development Goal of achieving land degradation neutrality a national target.”

Thiaw drew attention to the warnings sounded by recent scientific assessments and the growing public alarm at the frequency of weather-related disasters such as drought, forest fires, flash floods and soil loss. He urged delegates to be mindful of the opportunities for change that are opening up, and take action. The response of governments from developed countries will decide how useful the current summit will be.

The world is in trouble otherwise. The current pace of land transformation is putting a million species at risk of extinction. One in four hectares of this converted land is no longer usable due to unsustainable land management practices. These trends have put the well-being of 3.2 billion people around the world at risk. In tandem with climate change, this may force up to 700 million people to migrate by 2050.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/india-promotes-south-south-cooperation-key-questions-unaddressed/feed/0Desertification Costs World Economy up to 15 trillion dollars – U.N.http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/desertification-costs-world-economy-15-trillion-dollars-u-n/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=desertification-costs-world-economy-15-trillion-dollars-u-n
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/desertification-costs-world-economy-15-trillion-dollars-u-n/#respondSat, 07 Sep 2019 00:47:15 +0000James Reinlhttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=163132Forest fires, droughts and other forms of land degradation cost the global economy as much as 15 trillion dollars every year and are deepening the climate change crisis, a top United Nations environment official said Friday. Ibrahim Thiaw, executive secretary of the U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), said the degradation of land was shaving […]

Forest fires, droughts and other forms of land degradation cost the global economy as much as 15 trillion dollars every year and are deepening the climate change crisis. Pictured is a drone visual of an area in Upper East Region, Ghana prior to restoration taken in 2015. Credit: Albert Oppong-Ansah /IPS

By James ReinlUNITED NATIONS, Sep 7 2019 (IPS)

Forest fires, droughts and other forms of land degradation cost the global economy as much as 15 trillion dollars every year and are deepening the climate change crisis, a top United Nations environment official said Friday.

“In very simple terms, the message is to say: invest in land restoration as a way of improving livelihoods, in reducing vulnerabilities contributing to climate change, and reducing risks for the economy,” Thiaw said in response to a question from IPS.

Thiaw spoke to reporters in New York through a video-link from New Delhi, India, where delegates from UNCCD signatories are gathering for talks on tackling the desertification threat, which runs until Sept. 13.

Droughts and desertification currently hit 70 countries each year, while sand and dust storms are becoming a growing menace around the world, leading to asthma, bronchitis and other health problems, Thiaw warned.

“The good news is that the technology, the science and the knowledge is there to actually reduce land degradation and fix this phenomenon once and for all,” said Thiaw, formerly a Mauritanian official and deputy chief of the U.N. Environment Programme.

“Land restoration is being done in many parts of the world and by restoring land we are able to mitigate climate change.”

Some 100 government ministers and 8,000 delegates from 196 countries are at the UNCCD talks, which will cover drought, land tenure, restoring ecosystems, climate change, health, sand and dust storms and funding to revamp cities.

Thiaw praised a record-breaking turnout of decision-makers in the Indian capital that “could mark a major turning point for how we manage the scarce land and water resources we have left.”

Attendees include Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, his counterpart from Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Ralph Gonsalves, and the world body’s deputy secretary-general Amina Mohammed.

An outcome document, known as the “Delhi Declaration”, will inform this month’s climate summit in New York and spur a “coalition of like-minded countries” to make firmer pledges on tackling droughts, said Thiaw.

“We are fast running out of time to build our resilience to climate change, avoid the loss of biological diversity and valuable ecosystems and achieve all other Sustainable Development Goals,” said Thiaw, referencing the U.N.’s SDG agenda.

“But we can turn around the lives of the over 3.2 billion people all over the world that are negatively impacted by desertification and drought, if there is political will. And we can revitalise ecosystems that are collapsing from a long history of land transformation and, in too many cases, unsustainable land management.”

Droughts are getting worse, says the UNCCD. By 2025, some 1.8 billion people will experience serious water shortages, and two-thirds of the world’s population will be living in “water-stressed” conditions.

Though droughts are complex and develop slowly, they cause more deaths than other types of disasters, the UNCCD warns. By 2045, droughts will have forced as many as 135 million people from their homes.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/desertification-costs-world-economy-15-trillion-dollars-u-n/feed/0Achieving Global Consensus on How to Slow Down Loss of Landhttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/achieving-global-consensus-to-slow-down-loss-of-land/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=achieving-global-consensus-to-slow-down-loss-of-land
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/achieving-global-consensus-to-slow-down-loss-of-land/#respondWed, 04 Sep 2019 15:58:59 +0000Ranjit Devrajhttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=163105Expectations are high, perhaps too high, as the 14th Conference of the Parties (CoP 14) of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), now into the third day of its two-week session, is being held outside the smog-filled Indian capital of New Delhi. At the inauguration on Monday, India’s minister for environment, forests and […]

India’s minister for environment, forests and climate change, Prakash Javadekar (left), said he would be happy if CoP 14 could achieve consensus on such difficult issues as drought management and land tenure. Courtesy: Ranjit Devraj

By Ranjit DevrajNEW DELHI, Sep 4 2019 (IPS)

Expectations are high, perhaps too high, as the 14th Conference of the Parties (CoP 14) of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), now into the third day of its two-week session, is being held outside the smog-filled Indian capital of New Delhi.

At the inauguration on Monday, India’s minister for environment, forests and climate change, Prakash Javadekar, soon after ceremonies to mark his taking over as president of the Convention for the next two years, said he would be happy if CoP 14 could achieve consensus on such difficult issues as drought management and land tenure.

Other issues on the agenda of CoP14, themed ‘Restore land, Sustain future’ and located in Greater Noida, in northern Uttar Pradesh state, include negotiations over consumption and production flows that have a bearing on agriculture and urbanisation, restoration of ecosystems and dealing with climate change.

The IPCC report covered interlinked, overlapping issues that are at the core of CoP14 deliberations — climate, change, desertification, and degradation, sustainable land management, food security and greenhouse gas fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems.

“Sustainable land management can contribute to reducing the negative impacts of multiple stressors, including climate change, on ecosystems and societies,” the IPCC report said. It also identified land use change as the largest driver of biodiversity loss and as having the greatest impact on the environment.

Javadekar said he saw hope in the fact that of the 196 parties to the Convention 122, including some of the most populous like Brazil, China, India, Nigeria, Russia and South Africa have agreed to make the U.N. Sustainable Development Goal of achieving land degradation neutrality (LDN) targets by 2030 as national objectives.

But the difficulty of seeing results on the ground can be gauged from India’s own difficult situation. Nearly 30 percent of India’s 328 million hectares, supporting 1.3 billion people, has become degraded through deforestation, over-cultivation, soil-erosion and wetland depletion, according to a satellite survey conducted in 2016 by the Indian Space Research Organisation.

A study, conducted last year by The Energy and Resource Institute (TERI), an independent think-tank based in New Delhi, estimates India’s losses from land degradation and change in land use to be worth 47 billion dollars in 2014—2015.

The question before CoP14 is how participating countries can slow down loss of land and along with it biodiversity threatening to impact 3.2 billion people across the world. “Three out of every four hectares have been altered from their natural states and the productivity of one every four hectares of land has been declining,” according to UNCCD.

Running in parallel to CoP14 is the 14th session of UNCCD’s committee on science and technology (CST14), a subsidiary body with stated objectives — estimating soil organic carbon lost as a result of land degradation, addressing the ‘land-drought nexus’ through land-based interventions and translating available science into policy options for participating countries.

On Tuesday, as CoP4 launched into substantive business, the participants at the CST and other subsidiary bodies began to voice real apprehensions and demands.

Bhutan representing the Asia Pacific group, highlighted the need for cooperation at all levels to disseminate and translate identified technologies and knowledge into direct benefits for local land users.

Bangladesh pointed out that LDN targets are sometimes linked to transboundary water resources and also called for mobilising additional resources for capacity building.

Colombia, speaking for the Latin America and Caribbean group, appreciated the value of research by the scientific panels, but urged introduction of improved technologies and mitigation strategies to reduce the direct impacts of drought on ecosystems, starting with soil degradation.

Russia, on behalf of Central and Eastern Europe, mooted the establishment of technical centres in the region to support the generation of scientific evidence to prevent and manage droughts, sustainable use of forests and peatlands and monitoring of sand and dust storms.

Civil society organisations, led by the Cape Town-based Environmental Monitoring Group, were also critical of the UNCCD for putting too much emphasis on LDN and demanded optimisation of land use through practical solutions that would ensure that carbon is retained in the soil.

“Retaining carbon in the soil is of particular value to India and its neighbouring countries, which presently have the world’s greatest rainwater runoffs into the sea,” says Himanshu Thakkar, coordinator, South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People (SANDRP), a New Delhi based NGO, working on the water and environment sectors.

“What South Asian countries need to do urgently is to improve the rainwater harvesting so as to recharge groundwater aquifers and local water bodies in a given catchment so that water is available in the post-monsoon period that increasingly see severe droughts,” Thakkar tells IPS. “This is where governments can be supportive.”

Benefits such as preventing soil degradation and consequent landslides that have become a common feature in South India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

A study published in May said half of the area around 16 of India’s 24 major river basins is facing droughts due to lowered soil moisture levels while at least a third of its 18 river basins has become non-resilient to vegetation droughts.

Responding to the suggestions and demands the Secretariat highlighted recommendations to ensure mainstreaming of LDN targets in national strategies and action programmes, partnerships on science-policy to increase awareness and understanding of LDN and collaborations to assess finance and capacity development needs.

In all, the delegates, who include 90 ministers and more than 7,000 participants drawn from among government officials, civil society and the scientific community from the 197 parties will thrash out 30 decision texts and draw up action plans to strengthen land-use policies and address emerging threats such as droughts, forest fires, dust storms and forced migration.

“The agenda shows that governments have come to CoP14 ready to find solutions to many difficult, knotty and emerging policy issues,” said Thiaw at the inaugural session. The conference ends with the parties signing a ‘New Delhi Declaration’ outlining actions to meet UNCCD goals for 2018-2030.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/achieving-global-consensus-to-slow-down-loss-of-land/feed/0Eastern Caribbean Embarks on Strategy Towards a Blue-Green Economyhttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/eastern-caribbean-embarks-strategy-towards-blue-green-economy/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=eastern-caribbean-embarks-strategy-towards-blue-green-economy
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/eastern-caribbean-embarks-strategy-towards-blue-green-economy/#respondTue, 03 Sep 2019 09:29:56 +0000Jewel Fraserhttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=163077In this Voices from the Global South podcast, IPS takes you to the Caribbean where correspondent Jewel Fraser understands how micro, small and medium enterprises hold the key for build economies that are resilient to the impacts of climate change.

In this Voices from the Global South podcast, IPS takes you to the Caribbean where correspondent Jewel Fraser understands how micro, small and medium enterprises hold the key for build economies that are resilient to the impacts of climate change.

Scientific expeditions in recent years have revealed that the high seas, 200 nautical miles from coastal shores, harbor an incredible array of species that provide essential services for life on Earth. Credit: The Pew Charitable Trusts

By Thalif DeenUNITED NATIONS, Sep 2 2019 (IPS)

The world’s high seas, which extend beyond 200 nautical miles, are deemed “international waters” to be shared globally– but they remain largely ungoverned.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has warned that the world’s fisheries have continued to decline, with 33 percent of fish stocks “overfished,” resulting in devastating economic consequences for coastal nations and small island developing states (SIDS).

Still, a two-week long meeting, described as the third in a series of four substantive sessions of an intergovernmental conference of 190 member states, concluded August 30, without “a serious commitment” to a longstanding proposed high seas treaty.

A final negotiating session is scheduled to take place in the first half of 2020.

Asked about the roadblocks during recent negotiations, Liz Karan, Project Director for Protecting Ocean Life on the High Seas at Pew Charitable Trusts, told IPS: “The challenging issues in the negotiations have not changed.”

She said countries still need to find solutions for sharing benefits derived from marine genetic resources, and how a new treaty body will coordinate with existing regional fisheries management organizations, and sectoral organizations such as the International Maritime Organization (IMO) and the International Seabed Authority (ISA).

The current draft treaty text, she pointed out, still retains the ambitious options to create a comprehensive Marine Protected Area (MPA) network aimed at preserving high seas marine life.

Credit: FAO

Dr. Sandra Schoettner of Greenpeace’s Protect the Oceans campaign, said: “It is very disappointing to see that the pace and ambition in this meeting don’t match the level of urgency required to save our oceans and protect our planet against the climate emergency and massive biodiversity loss we are facing.”

She said the lack of political will for a progressive outcome of these negotiations is alarming as some countries clearly still favor exploitation over protection. Keeping things as they are is not going to save our oceans or, ultimately, humankind.

“That’s why it’s so frustrating to see UN members like the European Union proposing insufficient solutions that don’t represent a real change for our oceans,” she noted.

“In addition, we expect more ambition from China, the host of the CBD CoP15, to be at the forefront of biodiversity protection. We also expect a maritime nation like Norway to take leadership in this process and are disappointed to see them push for a treaty that manages our global oceans in the same way which has brought them to the brink of collapse,” Dr Schoettner declared.

According to the High Seas Alliance, the ocean’s key role in mitigating climate change, which includes absorbing 90% of the extra heat and 26% of the excess carbon dioxide created by human sources, has had a devastating effect on the ocean itself.

Managing the multitude of other anthropogenic stressors exerted on it will increase its resilience to climate change and ocean acidification and protect unique marine ecosystems, many of which are still unexplored and undiscovered. Because these are international waters, the conservation measures needed can only be put into place via a global treaty, the Alliance said.

Credit: Greenpeace

Peggy Kalas, coordinator of High Seas Alliance told IPS each of the primary elements has difficult issues but, likely, the Marine Genetic Resources (MGR) discussion and questions surrounding access and benefit sharing are one of the most difficult.

Asked if the proposed treaty will ensure a comprehensive MPA network to protect the rich biodiversity in the world’s oceans, she said: “Certainly, one of our key ambitions for this agreement, is to provide a framework for the establishment of well-managed and representative network of MPAs.”

On small island developing states (SIDS), most of whom are threatened by sea-level rise triggered by climate change, Kalas said: “A global approach and decision-making body will help smaller states with less capacity, if acting alone, to protect areas beyond national jurisdiction (ABNJ).”

She said the proposed moratorium on deep sea mining is a separate process than the discussion taking place with respect to deep seabed mining (DSM). That discussion will continue within the confines of the International Seabed Authority (ISA).

Dr Palitha Kohona, who co-chaired (along with Dr Elizabeth Linzaard of the Netherlands) the UN Adhoc Group on Biological Diversity Beyond National Jurisdiction, told IPS that during past negotiations in that Group, a historic compromise was struck between the EU and the Group of 77 (G77) developing nations plus China.

Both groups agreed to support the EU’s pursuit of marine protected areas (MPA) while the G77 demand for benefit-sharing– relating to products developed by industry using marine genetic resources beyond national jurisdiction, mainly by the pharmaceutical industry– would be accommodated by the EU.

While this combination of forces between the G77 and the EU enabled the Working Group to finalise its recommendations by consensus, a group of countries whose common motive remained obscure, continued to express reservations, said Dr Kohona, a former Chief of the UN Treaty Section.

Nevertheless, these states, which included Norway, Russia, the US and South Korea, did not block consensus during negotiations back in February 2015.

He said the concerns of developing countries need as much attention as the call of the EU for MPAs, if the proposed Global Oceans Treaty is to be successfully finalized. But much work will need to be done inter-sessionally.

Admittedly, while the global oceans are under enormous stress with dead areas continuing to expand, and need urgent attention, the call of the developing world not to be excluded from the next development in industry, the revolution of the pharmaceutical industry based on marine genetic resources, must not be ignored.

“Precedents and compromises from within the Law of the Sea framework will need further exploration,” he declared.

Dr Schoettner of Greenpeace said the stakes are even higher now for the final stage of the negotiations.

In 2020, world leaders need to deliver a Global Ocean Treaty that allows the creation of fully protected ocean sanctuaries in international waters.

In order to seize this historic opportunity to safeguard our oceans for future generations, Greenpeace urges heads of states and ministers to commit to a strong Global Ocean Treaty – so that delegates in the negotiating room have a clear mandate to advocate progress instead of just managing defeat, she noted.

“The solution is right in front of us, now all we are missing is the political will to give a chance to our oceans and to the people who rely on it to survive.”
The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/uns-high-seas-treaty-heading-towards-troubled-waters/feed/0How the African Development Bank Plans to Mobilise Funds for Climate Adaptationhttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/african-development-bank-plans-mobilise-funds-climate-adaptation/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=african-development-bank-plans-mobilise-funds-climate-adaptation
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/african-development-bank-plans-mobilise-funds-climate-adaptation/#respondFri, 30 Aug 2019 07:49:20 +0000Isaiah Esipisuhttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=163048In this first Voices from the Global South podcast, IPS takes you to the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia where the 8th Climate Change and Development in Africa Conference is currently taking place.

In this first Voices from the Global South podcast, IPS takes you to the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia where the 8th Climate Change and Development in Africa Conference is currently taking place.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/african-development-bank-plans-mobilise-funds-climate-adaptation/feed/0The Arctic: Earth´s Last Frontierhttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/arctic-earths-last-frontier/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=arctic-earths-last-frontier
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/arctic-earths-last-frontier/#respondThu, 29 Aug 2019 17:31:58 +0000Jan Lundiushttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=163044The last frontier for utilizing and maybe even exhausting Earth´s natural resources is opening up in the Arctic and some of the world´s wealthiest nations are trying to secure their piece of the cake. Some act openly, others are more secretive – recently one of the competitors entered the game in a remarkably unwieldy manner. […]

The last frontier for utilizing and maybe even exhausting Earth´s natural resources is opening up in the Arctic and some of the world´s wealthiest nations are trying to secure their piece of the cake. Some act openly, others are more secretive – recently one of the competitors entered the game in a remarkably unwieldy manner.

Lysekil is a picturesque town by Skagerak, a strait between Sweden, Denmark and Norway, opening up to the North Sea. For many years its main income came from salted herring and train oil, while it during the 19th century developed into a popular spa and bathing resort. Most Swedes know Lysekil as the birthplace of Kalle´s Caviar a popular sandwich spread of creamed smoked roe produced by Abba Seafood, a brand that provided the name for a Swedish pop group of world renown.

Many Swedes were astonished when Gunter Gao Jingde, chairman of a Hong Kong private investment company, Sunbase International (Holdings) Ltd., gave the city council of Lysekil an offer they did not refuse. Sunbase was established in 1991 and is active in property investment, transport, infrastructure and technology. It was in late November 2017 that Sunbase´s long-running and secretive negotiations with members of Lysekil´s city council were revealed. At this tiny community of 7,500 inhabitants Gunter Gao Jingde´s representatives proposed the construction of Scandinavia’s largest port. Town officials accepted the offer without any public consultation. Under Swedish law, the power to approve such projects is entirely in the hands of the local municipalities and cannot be challenged from above. Lysekil´s city council was tempted by a generous offer that did not only include an expansion of the town harbour, making it deep enough to receive huge vessels from all over the world. On top of that, Sunbase promised to expand the road net and railway system reaching Lysekil, bridging the nearby fjord of Gullmarn and invest in schools, hospitals and care for the elderly.

It was a reportage aired on Swedish national radio that alerted the people of Lysekil. Several of them declared that their elected representatives had taken them for a ride. The chairman of the City Council vented his anger over these “exaggerated protests”. After all, he and his colleagues had negotiated a deal with a foreign, private firm promising a bright future for Lysekil and he pointed out that VOLVO, the Swedish prestigious car manufacture in neighbouring Gothenburg, was a subsidiary of the Chinese motor company Geely. However, local protests became even more vociferous when it was revealed that Gao Jingde was not only a member of the small-circle Election Committee which selects the Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administration Region Government of the People´s Republic of China and since 1993 also a member of the Chinese People´s Political Advisory Conference a legislative advisory body of the People´s Republic of China. Furthermore, Sunbase is closely connected with the Chinese military establishment, among other things it owns the 18 Hong Kong land areas occupied by military installations and Gao Jingde has personally financed the publication of various books about China´s military forces.

Local opponents to the sale of Lysekil´s harbour became particularly upset when they could not be provided with any concrete guarantees that the planned port would not serve any Chinese military interests. Petitions signed by a long list of opponents to the Chinese deal was submitted to Lysekil´s city council and while facing negative publicity and local anger Sunbase finally called off the entire venture. 1

Why would China be interested in purchasing a port from a small, Swedish town and turn it into a huge state-of-the-art seaport structure? Most commentators agree that the initiative was probably related to the Chinese Government´s global strategy of infrastructure development and worldwide investment – The Belt and Road Initiative. The Lysekil port would become one link in what has been referred to as the Polar Silk Road, which through Chinese controlled ports and industrial hubs would be connected with a Pan-Asian Silk Road. From a transport point of view such an Arctic thoroughfare makes sense since sailing a container ship from China to northern Europe via the Arctic Sea north of Russia would shorten the alternative journey time via the Suez canal by 10 days.

However, this is probably not the only reason for China´s interest in the Arctic realms. Climate change and global warming are currently opening up access to Arctic riches, wetting the appetite of nations bordering the Arctic sea, and not only them – China has demonstrated a great interest in the untapped resources that have laid frozen and inaccessible in the distant north. The Arctic conceals huge deposits of minerals as well as an estimated 13 percent of the world´s oil reserves and 30 percent of the natural gas reserves.

Into this sensitive web of delicate, diplomatic maneuvers and carefully constructed plans for future exploitation of the Arctic U.S. President Donald J. Trump now has entered like an elephant in a porcelain shop, or as the Danish Newspaper Berlingske described his appearance – a clown stumbling into a circus ring. While the Danes´ were preparing for a state visit of the American President he suddenly offered to buy Greenland from them, declaring:

Essentially it’s a large real estate deal. A lot of things can be done. Ownership of Greenland is hurting Denmark very badly because they’re losing almost $700 million a year carrying it. 2

The Danish Government was flabbergasted, the Royal Court scandalized and the Greenlanders horrified, one of them, Else Mathiesen told local media:

You can’t just buy an island or a people. This sounds like something from the era of slavery and colonial power. 3

The Danish Pime Minister stated:

Greenland is not for sale. Greenland is not Danish. Greenland belongs to Greenland. I strongly hope that this is not meant seriously. 4

An undeterred Trump replicated:

Denmark essentially owns it [Greenland]. We’re very good allies with Denmark, we protect Denmark like we protect large portions of the world. So the concept came up and I said ”Certainly I’d be strategically interested,”and we’d be interested, but we’ll talk to them a little bit.” It’s not No1 on the burner, I can tell you that. 5

After the debacle a deeply hurt Trump canceled his visit to Denmark, declaring:

I thought the prime minister’s statement that it was an absurd idea was nasty.
It was not a nice way of doing it. She could have just said, ”No, we’d rather not do it.” She’s not talking to me, she’s talking to the United States of America. They can’t say: ”How absurd.” 6

Trump´s ungainly behaviour has ripped open a sensitive scare. Greenland was until 1953 a Danish colony. In 1979, the Danish government granted home rule to the vast territory and in 2008 agreed to allow Kalaallit Nunaat, as it is called in Inuit, to gradually assume responsibility for policing, jurisdiction, mining and border control, while the Danish government retains its control of foreign affairs and defense. However, an increasing confidence fuelled by prospects of controlling the vast natural resources of the Arctic Sea make many of Greenland´s 55,000 inhabitants, the majority of them Inuit, favouring full independence from Denmark and Trump´s lack of diplomatic skills and ignorance of people´s rights have reignited the debate.

Like during the late 19th century´s ”scramble for Africa”, world powers are now in for a race to control riches that actually belong to others. A competition incited by greed and recklessness that may prove harmful to indigenous peoples, the environment and even world peace, in particular if stakeholders express dated opinions and behave with the blatant brutality of the current U.S. President.

The right to food is a universal human right. Yet, over 820 million people are going hungry, according the latest edition of the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI 2019). In addition, 2 billion people in the world are food insecure with great risk of malnutrition and poor health” 1.

Another report 2 describes the situation even more worrying: “At the global level, one person in three is malnourished today and one in two could be malnourished by 2030 in a business-as-usual scenario. While hunger remains a critical concern, malnutrition in all its forms (undernutrition, micronutrient deficiencies, overweight and obesity) now affects all countries, whether low-, middle- or high-income. Those different forms of malnutrition can co-exist within the same country or community, and sometimes within the same household or individual.”

Against this backdrop, the UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS) 3, which is, at the global level, the foremost inclusive and evidence-based international and intergovernmental platform for food security and nutrition (FSN), requested a High Level Panel of Experts (HLPE) 4 to prepare a report on nutrition and food systems. The comprehensive HLPE report 5 is the basis for a series of inclusive, multi-stakeholder discussions at global and regional levels, including e-consultations, to provide inputs for shaping the Voluntary Guidelines (VGs) on Food Systems and Nutrition.

The zero draft 6 of the VGs provides a comprehensive overview on the situation of food security and nutrition. However, among the causes of malnutrition, appropriate reference to the root causes is still missing: poverty and inequalities. Due to their extreme poverty, many people do not have access to enough nutritious food, although it should not be a privilege, it is a basic human right. This confirms the need for transformation of our current food systems and make them more sustainable.

One basic problem is the misconception of low food price policy. The impacts of low food prices on the consumers’ behaviour are significant, including their buying preferences. The situation of “low food prices” appears to be the result of competition among retailers and as such, they seem to be positive, favouring the poor people. In reality, all people, including the poor, suffer the consequences of low food prices, which regularly mean low quality of food. Low quality, ultra-processed food (frequently with high fat, sugar and salt content, the so-called junk food) have serious consequences on the nutrition status of the poor populations, leading to obesity, overweight and other non-communicable diseases. Food prices generally do not reflect the real costs of production, ignore the positive and negative impacts (externalities) of food systems on the environment and on human health.

For the right decisions to transform our current food systems, true cost accounting is essential, giving due consideration to all environmental and human health externalities. This could help shape the VGs, recommending appropriate measures, policy incentives in support of sustainable solutions. There are ample scientific evidences related to the true costs of food and there are several studies 7 available on this topic.

In addition, artificially distorted, low food prices have a strong impact on the food waste as well. Cheap food conveys the message that it does not represent a real value and consumers will throw away food more easily. Higher food prices (reflecting the true costs of food) would discourage consumers to buy more than they effectively need. Realistic prices of food do not imply generally high food prices. Only the prices of those (ultraprocessed, junk) food would go up which do not internalize the environmental and public health externalities. Studies show that as a result of true cost accounting, locally produced, fresh, healthy, unprocessed (whole) food would become more competitive, for the benefit of those who produce them, and in particular, the consumers and the whole society. The solution for the poor is not cheap food, but decent work and wages, essential to combat extreme poverty. In addition, the costs of decent wages are much lower than the benefits of saving great amounts of public health care expenditure.

For the transformation of our food systems, sustainability should be the driving principle, paying due attention to the (so far ignored) environmental and social dimensions. Obviously, the economic dimension should also be considered, keeping in mind, however, that economic sustainability is nothing else but the result of the financial policy incentives or subsidies, promoting one or another type of food systems. In this regard, national legislators have enormous responsibility in providing the appropriate policy incentives to those food systems, which are sustainable. Sustainability addresses climate change adaptation and mitigation concerns as well, and goes well beyond, it provides adequate responses to a number of other environmental challenges (biodiversity loss, soil degradation) and to social issues as well, like rural employment.

The VGs are expected to provide assistance for the transformation of food systems and to make them more sustainable, in order to eliminate hunger and all forms of malnutrition and to supply fresh, diverse, nutritious food for a healthy diet for all.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/food-systems-need-transformation/feed/0Let’s Walk the Talk to Defeat Climate Change – African Leaders Toldhttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/lets-walk-talk-defeat-climate-change-african-leaders-told/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=lets-walk-talk-defeat-climate-change-african-leaders-told
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/lets-walk-talk-defeat-climate-change-african-leaders-told/#respondWed, 28 Aug 2019 15:05:56 +0000Isaiah Esipisuhttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=163026African leaders have been asked to walk the talk, and lead from the front, in order to build resilience and adaptation to the adverse impacts of climate change on the continent. This was the message conveyed by several speakers at the ongoing eighth Climate Change and Development in Africa (CCDA) conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. […]

African leaders have been asked to walk the talk, and lead from the front, in order to build resilience and adaptation to the adverse impacts of climate change on the continent.

This was the message conveyed by several speakers at the ongoing eighth Climate Change and Development in Africa (CCDA) conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

“Our first urgent action is to build the Resilience and Adaptation to the adverse impacts of climate change for the most vulnerable communities across Africa,” said Dr James Kinyangi, the Chief Climate Policy Officer at the African Development Bank (AfDB), as he articulated commitments by the Bank on tackling climate change.

“The time is now, to translate the (2015 Paris) agreement into concrete action, to safeguard development gains and address the needs of the poorest and most vulnerable,” he told the CCDA forum which brings together policy makers, civil society, youth, private sector, academia and development partners every year to discuss climate emerging issues and to review progress ahead of the UNFCCC Conference of Parties (COP).

“We must challenge our leaders to walk the talk, and lead from the front in the spirit of the UN Secretary General, who recently pointed out that beautiful speeches are not enough to reach the goals of the Paris Agreement,” said Mithika Mwenda, the Secretary General for the Pan Africa Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA) an umbrella organization of over 1000 Africa environment and climate civil society groups.

So far, 53 African countries have committed to Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to slow down the impact of climate change, identifying the need for an estimated USD 3.5 – 4 trillion of investment by 2030.

According to Kinyangi, these commitments present an opportunity for the AfDB to contribute to policies and actions that mobilise the financial resources needed to support long-term investments in resilience and Africa’s transition to low carbon development.

In a recently published interview, AfDB President Akinwumi Adesina said: “Africa cannot adapt to climate change through words. It can only adapt to climate change through resources.”

“Africa has been shortchanged in terms of climate change because the continent accounts for only 4 percent of greenhouse gas emissions but it suffers disproportionately from the negative impacts,” he declared.

He said AfDB is leading an effort to create an African Financial Alliance for climate, which will bring together financial institutions, stock exchanges, and central banks in Africa, to develop an endogenous financing model that would support Africa to adapt to climate change without depending on anybody else outside the continent.

Early this year, tropical cyclones, Idai and Kenneth ripped through five African countries – Mozambique, Malawi, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and the Comoros both within a period of one month.

Kenneth is on record as the strongest storm ever to make landfall, while Idai, is the worst ever storm in terms of loss and damages to hit the African continent, where more than 1,000 lives were lost with damage of property worth 1 billion US dollars.

“In Sudan, we have just won a democratic struggle, but we are faced by another catastrophic ecological crisis of monumental proportion, which, last week alone, killed at least 62 people and destroyed 37,000 homes,” said Nisreen Eslaim, a climate activist from Sudan, referring to floods that recently swept through the city of Khartoum.

Since the threat of floods, droughts and heatwaves will be amplified with increasing climate variability, experts believe that the best response strategy is one that improves the resilience of economies, infrastructure, ecosystems and societies to climate variability and change.

“As much as we are trying to respond to climate related calamities, we need longer-term action for disaster risk management. Hence, a reason why we must do whatever it takes to implement the Paris Agreement,” Kinyangi told IPS.

To support African countries adapt to climate change, AfDB has committed to ensuring that at least 40 percent of its project approvals are tagged as climate finance by 2020, with equal proportions for adaptation and mitigation. The bank also seeks to mainstream climate change and green growth initiatives into all investments by next year.

“As much as we will be mobilizing significantly, more new and additional climate finance, to Africa by 2020, we will keep pushing the rich countries to deliver on the pledged 100 billion dollars each year,” said Kinyangi.

“As we know, our leaders’ focus is slowly but surely turning to other issues dominating international diplomatic interactions such as Iran/US tiff, Brexit, Terrorism and the emerging extreme right-wing movements, which constitute a risk of increased climate scepticism,” said Mwenda.

“Our only hope is unity of purpose, and the purpose which brings us here in Addis Ababa – to contribute to a process which will shape the future of humanity and health of the planet,” added the PACJA boss.

According to Ambassador Josefa Sacko, the Commissioner for Rural Economy and Agriculture at the Africa Union Commission, there is need for increased ambition in the fight against climate change.

“Without ambitious and urgent global commitments to tackle climate change, the ability of most African countries to attain the Sustainable Development Goals and the ideals of Africa’s Agenda 2063 remain elusive,” she said.

Meanwhile, UN Secretary-General António Guterres, has convened a Climate Action Summit September 23 at the United Nations in New York, and has called on all leaders to come to the summit with concrete, ambitious and realistic plans to enhance their nationally determined contributions by 2020, in line with reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 45 per cent over the next decade, and to net zero emissions by 2050 as called for by the IPCC special report.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/lets-walk-talk-defeat-climate-change-african-leaders-told/feed/0Disaster Risk Resilience: Key to Protecting Vulnerable Communitieshttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/disaster-risk-resilience-key-protecting-vulnerable-communities/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=disaster-risk-resilience-key-protecting-vulnerable-communities
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/disaster-risk-resilience-key-protecting-vulnerable-communities/#respondWed, 28 Aug 2019 07:23:40 +0000Armida Salsiah Alisjahbanahttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=163020Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana is Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).

Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana is Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).

By Armida Salsiah AlisjahbanaBANGKOK, Thailand, Aug 28 2019 (IPS)

The past five years have been the hottest on record in Asia and the Pacific. Unprecedented heatwaves have swept across our region, cascading into slow onset disasters such as drought. Yet heat is only part of the picture. Tropical cyclones have struck new, unprepared parts of our region and devastatingly frequent floods have ensued. In Iran, these affected 10 million people this year and displaced 500,000 of which half were children. Bangladesh is experiencing its fourth wave of flooding in 2019. Last year, the state of Kerala in India faced the worst floods in a century.

Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana

This is the new climate reality in Asia and the Pacific. The scale of forecast economic losses for the region is sobering. Including slow-onset disasters, average annualised losses until 2030 are set to quadruple to about $675 billion compared to previous estimates. This represents 2.4 percent of the region’s GDP. Economic losses of such magnitude will undermine both economic growth and our region’s efforts to reduce poverty and inequality, keeping children out of schools and adults of work. Basic health services will be undermined, crops destroyed and food security jeopardised. If we do not act now, Asia-Pacific’s poorest communities will be among the worst affected.

Four areas of Asia and the Pacific are particularly impacted, hotspots which combine vulnerability to climate change, poverty and disaster risk. In transboundary river basins in South and South-East Asia such as the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna river basin, floods alternate with prolonged droughts. In South-East Asia and East and North-East Asia earthquakes, tsunamis and landslides threaten poor populations in the Pacific Ring of Fire. Intensifying sand and dust storms are blighting East, Central and South-west Asia. Vulnerable populations in Pacific Small Islands Developing States are five times more at risk of disasters than a person in South and South-East Asia. Many countries’ sustainable development prospects are now directly dependent on their exposure to natural disasters and their ability to build resilience.

Yet this vicious cycle between poverty, inequalities and disasters is not inevitable. It can be broken if an integrated approach is taken to investing in social and disaster resilience policies. As disasters disproportionately affect the poor, building resilience must include investment in social protection as the most effective means of reducing poverty. Conditional cash transfer systems can be particularly effective as was shown in the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines. Increasing pre-arranged risk finance and climate risk insurance is also crucial. While investments needed are significant, in most countries these are equivalent to less than half the costs forecast to result from natural disasters.

The use of technological innovations to protect the region from natural disasters must go hand in hand with these investments. Big data reveal patterns and associations between complex disaster risks and predict extreme weather and slow onset disasters to improve the readiness of our economies and our societies. In countries affected by typhoons, big data applications can make early warning systems stronger and can contribute to saving lives and reducing damage. China and India are leading the way in using technology to warn people of impending disasters, make their infrastructure more resilient and deliver targeted assistance to affected farmers and citizens.

Asia and the Pacific can learn from this best practice and multilateral cooperation is the way to give scale to our region’s disaster resilience effort. With this ambition in mind, representatives from countries across the region are meeting in Bangkok this week at the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) to explore regional responses to natural disasters. Their focus will include strengthening Asia-Pacific’s Disaster Resilience Network and capitalising on innovative technology applications for the benefit of the broader region. This is our opportunity to replicate successes, accelerate drought mitigation strategies and develop a regional sand and dust storm alert system. I hope the region can seize it to protect vulnerable communities from disaster risk in every corner of Asia and the Pacific.

Africa is grappling with myriad environmental and climate challenges, from drought to loss of biodiversity, cyclones and plastics pollution.

Africa Renewal spoke with the UN Environment Programme’s Deputy Executive Director, Joyce Msuya, on how African countries can mitigate some of these challenges and the opportunities that are available.

Excerpts from the interview:

MUSAU: It is about a year since you were appointed Deputy Executive Director of UNEP, and for a while you acted as the Executive Director. What has this journey been like for you?

MSUYA: I joined UNEP in August 2018 and it has been a fulfilling journey for me. Given the absolute centrality of environment in development, in attaining Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), it’s been great to see how the UN has played a leading role in many ways.

For example, we recently released the Global Environment Outlook 6, showing that we are increasingly connecting the environment to the broader development issues.

MUSAU: What are some of the highlights of your time at UNEP?

MSUYA: A key highlight has definitely been the Fourth UN Environment Assembly in March 2019, which focused on the innovations that can help us achieve sustainable production and consumption.

After five days of discussions, ministers from more than 170 UN member states delivered a bold blueprint for change, saying the world needed to speed up moves towards a new model of development in order to respect the vision laid out in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Member States agreed to 23 non-binding resolutions covering a range of environmental challenges, including a more circular global economy; sustainable public procurement; addressing food waste and sharing best practices on energy-efficient and safe cold chain solutions.

If countries deliver on all that was agreed here and implement the resolutions, we could take a big step towards a new world order where we no longer grow at the expense of nature but instead see people and planet thrive together.

I have a strong team behind me—the staff at UNEP and the rest of the UN family. As a woman from East Africa, it is a very humbling experience to serve in the organisation, and be based at UNEP headquarters in Nairobi, to work on environmental issues.

Zipporah Musau

MUSAU: What are some of the major environmental challenges facing Africa today and how can they be addressed?

MSUYA: I would summarize the biggest environmental challenges facing Africa today in four categories. One is the impact of climate change, considering that most African economies still depend on the agriculture sector.

The second is loss of biodiversity because this impacts food security and natural ecosystems. The third is energy, as many African economies are growing fast and require sufficient energy.

Lastly, looking at the demographic trends, there is a lot of growth in urban areas with populations moving to cities. This brings challenges, including that of waste management.

MUSAU: Are there any opportunities?

MSUYA: There are exciting opportunities. After the Paris Agreement, there was a global commitment and political will to address climate change. We are currently working with African countries to help them develop national plans in mitigation and adaptation.

On nature, next year there will be a big global meeting in China on the Convention on Biological Diversity, offering African member states the opportunity to shape the global biodiversity agenda by sharing strategies that are working well and can be replicated elsewhere.

Africa is endowed with many hours of unobstructed sunlight; how can we promote more usage of solar energy and other renewables to fuel Africa’s economies?

Credit: UNEP

MUSAU: UNEP has been pushing for a green economy by promoting low carbon, resource efficient and socially inclusive policies. How can African countries tap into this?

MSUYA: Push for cleaner sources of energy. We are already seeing several developments in this. If you follow what is happening in South Africa, trying to move its heavy manufacturing industrial sector from being dependent on coal to cleaner energy…it is a slow process. Transition from bad sources of energy to renewables takes time.

Then we have banning deforestation and making green economy plans. Countries like Ethiopia, Ghana and South Africa are moving in this direction. It needs ministers of environment to work very closely with ministers of finance to develop these plans. UNEP is using its convening role to help member states do this.

UN Environment supports and showcases science-informed policies that have the potential to transform humanity’s relationship with our environment.

MUSAU: What are some of the ways African countries can deal with the plastic menace?

MSUYA: Governments, citizens, the private sector and civil society all have a role to play when it comes to plastics. There are four ways that African governments and citizens can help with the menace.

First is leadership and political will to actually put in place regulations to ban single-use plastics and promote reuse of smart plastics. The second is for the citizens to make smart choices, children telling their parents ‘mama, papa, please don’t buy plastics’. Consumer choices can influence the environmental footprint of plastics.

Third, we need to celebrate and advance homegrown advocacy such as the “Flip Flopi,” an indigenous innovation from Kenya where a boat has been made entirely out of plastics found on beaches. It recently sailed from Lamu to Zanzibar to raise awareness.

Lastly, partnerships with the private sector. If you look at good examples of where single-use plastics have been banned, there have been engagements between governments and the private sector to encourage them to find alternative and more sustainable ways to replace plastics bags.

Part of UNEP’s role is to promote the sharing of these experiences. A number of countries in Africa, including my own, Tanzania, and also Kenya, are looking at how they can preserve the national parks to sustain the tourism industry and people’s livelihoods.

And finally, we need to see how we can address the plastic menace by introducing more circularity into economies. This is where capacity-building support for governments will be critical.

MUSAU: How is UNEP helping member states in Africa to achieve SDGs and the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda? In particular, how is UNEP coordinating with pan-African organisations such as the African Union to address the effects of climate change?

MSUYA: UN Environment supports and showcases science-informed policies that have the potential to transform humanity’s relationship with our environment. We also host global platforms – from the UN Environment Assembly to international financial networks to multilateral environmental agreements – that catalyze action.

And we advocate, working with citizens across the world, to inspire change. However, we cannot do it alone because the scale of the challenge is huge but there are enormous opportunities to make a difference and so partnerships are critical. For political advocacy we are engaging with the African Union through our office in Addis Ababa.

We provide policy advice, technical assistance and capacity building. We are working with NEPAD and talking to the East African Community to see how we can support the sub-regional and regional initiatives. I was in Cape Town, South Africa, earlier this year, with other regional bodies, to learn how countries develop green economic plans.

MUSAU: How is UNEP engaging women and youth?

MSUYA: We are engaging them at various levels as part of the intergovernmental process. Women and youth are a core part of implementing our programs. At the UNEA 4, we heard from many youth activists on why they are becoming impatient and demanded for action from us.

MUSAU: What is your message to African countries on environment?

MSUYA: Africa has a significant role to play when it comes to the environment. All these global challenges have an impact on the continent, hence the need to hear African voices at all levels in global forums. Also, incorporating and mainstreaming environment in all the activities at the country level is key as is translating these into actions.

Partnerships are crucial: Africa is diverse, but we can build on that diversity to bring collective action. Our challenges cannot be solved individually. It takes a village to raise a child in Africa; it is going to take a village to solve our environmental problems.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/pushing-green-economy-clean-energy/feed/0What Would It Really Take to Plant a Trillion Trees?http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/really-take-plant-trillion-trees/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=really-take-plant-trillion-trees
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/really-take-plant-trillion-trees/#respondMon, 26 Aug 2019 18:32:48 +0000Tim Christophersenhttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=162993Tim Christophersen is Head of the Freshwater, Land and Climate Branch at UNEP and Chair of the Global Partnership on Forest and Landscape Restoration

Tree planting is capturing the minds of those who look for fast climate action. Earlier this month, the Ethiopian Government announced a new world record: thousands of volunteers planted 353 million trees in one single day. This came shortly after a team of scientists identified suitable places in the world where up to 1 trillion new trees could be planted. Such a massive effort could absorb about 20 years’ worth of global greenhouse gas emissions. And on 8 August 2019, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change launched a Special Report on the importance of land use for the climate. About 23 per cent of all emissions come from the agriculture, land use and forest sector. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change outlines land management opportunities with benefits for food security, biodiversity, and the climate, such as agroforestry.

The growing enthusiasm for forests and trees is a good thing. Ecosystem restoration will be critical in turning the tide against climate change, and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. But we need to be mindful of some pitfalls lurking along the way. We have learned valuable lessons over the past decades in afforestation and other restoration projects across dozens of countries. A few basic principles outlined by the Global Partnership on Forest and Landscape Restoration can help us to reduce costs and minimize future risk as the world embraces the need to plant more trees.

Stop the bleeding
The first rule for ecosystem restoration is to stop the further destruction of forests, wetlands, and other critical ‘green infrastructure’. Conserving natural habitats is always cheaper than restoring it later.

Most new trees do not need to be planted
Most ecosystems in the world have remnant seeds in the soil and natural regrowth can be cheaper and more successful than tree planting. The most cost-effective type of restoration is to work with the forces of nature. For example, across the Sahel, a successful and fast landscape restoration technique is called ‘farmer-managed natural regeneration’. It uses the existence of remnant root stocks below the surface, where the trees above ground have disappeared long ago. Farmers nurture those roots and trees back to life. The results are stunning—within a few years, large trees dot the surface of the once barren and dry savannah, bringing back water, productivity and life.

We don’t need to reinvent the wheel
There is already an impressive body of knowledge on which trees to plant, when and where. Under the Bonn Challenge, a global restoration goal initiated by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and the Government of Germany, 59 governments, private associations and other entities have pledged to bring 170 million hectares into restoration by 2020, and 350 million by 2030. Dozens of countries have already detailed maps of where the best restoration opportunities can be found, and how to restore forests and landscapes. Usually, indigenous tree species are preferable, but in a rapidly changing climate, we need to keep in mind that the natural ranges of trees are shifting.

Social inclusion is essential
Forest and landscape restoration is mostly about social transformation, rather than technological solutions. However, this transformation is hard work and requires patience. It is tempting to just stick a few tree seedlings in the ground and hope for the best, but real restoration across an entire landscape is the work of years or even decades. Large-scale restoration successes such as the Shinyanga landscape in Tanzania or the Loess Plateau in China have shown that results of well-planned restoration can yield very high returns for society over a long time.

We must remove the bottlenecks
Some ingredients for success are essential, and their availability varies across countries. The most important one is political will. Fortunately, political will is now growing as protests for more climate action are spreading. Another major ingredient is clarity over ownership and management rights. The estimated 1 billion smallholder farmers in the world will be key. We need to empower them, and give them access to the tools and the finance for improved farming, such as agroforestry. A third key ingredient is availability of a variety of high-quality tree seedlings, in particular for planting trees on farms.

Finally, perhaps the most critical ingredient are massive public and private investments into land restoration. We need to achieve a similar trajectory for a shift in agriculture and forestry as is happening in renewable energy. And just like the shift in renewables, it will take a massive push from both public and private actors to establish restoration as a new financial asset class. It is estimated that every dollar invested in ecosystem restoration can yield more than US$10 in return through ecosystem services. Fortunately, we see growing interest from the finance industry to invest in ecosystem restoration and regenerative agriculture.

Ecosystem restoration and other nature-based climate solutions will be highlighted at the UN Climate Action Summit on 23 September. And the UN General Assembly has just proclaimed a UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration from 2021 to 2030. With the right approach, we can make the conservation and restoration of ecosystems, including the planting of billions of new trees, a major step in building the sustainable future we all want.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/really-take-plant-trillion-trees/feed/0How to Bring the Indus Delta Back to Life – Give it Waterhttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/bring-indus-delta-back-life-give-water/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=bring-indus-delta-back-life-give-water
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/bring-indus-delta-back-life-give-water/#respondWed, 21 Aug 2019 12:30:02 +0000Zofeen Ebrahimhttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=162932Gulab Shah, 45, is having sleepless nights. He and his family are worried about their imminent migration from their village in Jhaloo to a major city in Pakistan, thanks to the continued ingress of sea water inland. “That is all that I and my brothers discuss day and night,” he told IPS over telephone from […]

Farmers on the Indus River Delta. Over the years the water has dried up and sea has ingressed inland. Credit: Zofeen Ebrahim/IPS

By Zofeen EbrahimKARACHI, Aug 21 2019 (IPS)

Gulab Shah, 45, is having sleepless nights. He and his family are worried about their imminent migration from their village in Jhaloo to a major city in Pakistan, thanks to the continued ingress of sea water inland.

“That is all that I and my brothers discuss day and night,” he told IPS over telephone from his village which lies near Kharo Chan, in Sindh province’s Thatta district.

He and his family also talk about what it “will mean living among strangers, in a strange place; adopting an unfamiliar lifestyle; losing culture and identity”.

Of the nearly 6,000 acres of land that Shah’s father inherited, over 2,500 acres have slowly been swallowed by the sea over the last 70 years.

And even though they still have enough land to sell to enable them to set up their home in a city, “there are no buyers!” Shah proclaimed.

“Nobody wants to buy land that they know is going to be submerged soon,” he said.

And if they stay, they do not have enough farm hands to work on their land. “Every year more and more people, mostly farmhands, are moving out of here as there is less work for them,” Shah explained.

For millions of years, the River Indus sustained the marshes, the 17 creeks, miles of swamps, mangrove forests and the mudflats along with the various estuarine habitats in the fan-shaped Indus delta, before reaching its final destination and emptying into the Arabian Sea. It marks a journey of 3,000 km from the Himalayas.

Generations of families have lived in the Indus River Delta. But as the flow of the river has reduced drastically over the years many are leaving and making their way to the cities in search of a better way of life. Credit: Zofeen Ebrahim/IPS

Today this Ramsar Site, a wetland of international importance, is parched and dying a slow death.

The dams and barrages on the river sucked the fresh river and stopped it from reaching the delta. It also resulted in a reduction of sediment deposition, giving the sea a perfect opportunity to ingress into the land.

Climate change has had an impact too here. The rains are unpredictable now, water levels don’t increase and conversely over the years there has been an increased demand for water for both agricultural activities and a growing population.

If the delta gets 10 million acre feet (MAF) consistently over the 12 months, or 5,000 cubic feet per seconds daily, as promised through the provincial water apportionment Accord of 1991, the delta would thrive.

However, that is not the case. “Along the way, from the mountains to the sea, there is shortage, pilferagecoupled with losses due to an ageing distribution system,” explained Usman Tanveer, the deputy commissioner or principal representative of the provincial government in the district of Thatta.

“We require a well regulated water management system from the time the water leaves the mountains till it reaches the Arabian Sea,” he told IPS.

He pointed out that as a specialised subject, water needs to be looked into more scientifically. For example, said Tanveer, “First and foremost, we need proper research and experts to be able to plan for future water needs and this includes coming up with finding optimal conservation solutions, natural sites if small dams have to be built (instead of frowning upon whenever the D [dam] word is brought up).”

“We need to have a legal framework in place so thefts are deterred, and most importantly, an integrated mechanism to collect water cess from every user,” he concluded.

A 2018 report by United States-Pakistan Centre for Advanced Studies in Water (USPCASW) at Mehran University of Engineering and Technology (MUET), Jamshoro, using historical maps and field research, noted that back in 1833 the delta spanned some 12,900 square kilometres (sq km); today it was a mere 1,000 sq km.

“The human impact on the environment, the change in the natural flow of the river, resulting in reduction in sediment deposition, and sea-level ingress and climate change have resulted in the contraction of the delta,” said Dr. Altaf Ali Siyal, who heads the Integrated Water Resources Management Department (IWRM) at USPCASW, and is the principal author of the delta report.The study concluded the delta today constitutes just 8 to 10 percent of its original expanse.

But many living in the delta believed it would begin to die when man reined in the mighty Indus. The construction of the Sukkur barrage (1923 to 1932) by the British, followed by Kotri barrage in 1955 and Guddu in 1962, squeezed the life out of the once-verdant delta.

Prior to this Sindh province received 150 MAF of water annually, now it is less than one-tenth of this at only 10 MAF annually. “It would be even better if it receives between 25 to 35 MAF water so that it can return to its past grandeur,” Siyal told IPS.

Take the case of the Shah’s land.

“Till 10 years back about 400 acres were still cultivable,” said Shah. However, this year, they were able to cultivate just 150 acres. “Acute water shortages on the one hand and increased salinity on the other, has made it impossible to till all of our land,” he explained.

Until the 1990s his family grew the “sweetest bananas” and the finest vegetables on over 400 acres of land. They had led a prosperous life.

All of that is lost now.

Two years back, because of acute shortage of water, Shah and his brothers decided to grow the heart-shaped green betel leaf, locally called paan, over 12 acres of land.

But Dr. Hassan Abbas, an expert in hydrology and water resources has both long term and short term solutions to revive the delta.

“One would be to rejuvenate the natural course of the river the way United Kingdom, the United States and even Australia are by dismantling dams and adopting the free flowing river model,” he told IPS.

“A free flowing model is one where water, silt, and other natural materials can move along unobstructed. But more importantly, it’s one by which the ecological integrity of the entire river system is maintained as a whole,” explained Abbas.

The other, more imminent, solution is to address the way farmers irrigate. “We need to make agriculture water-efficient without compromising on our yield. The water saved thus can be allowed to flow back into its course and regenerate the delta.”

Hehas a pilot in mind that can build the confidence and capacity of the farmers when it comes to water-efficient farming, and at the same time, stopping the supply of water in that area by blocking one canal.

“See if it is socially and economically acceptable to the farmers and the environmental benefits accrued,” he said, adding, “If there is a positive side, more canals can be closed.”

However, a quick and cost-effective manner of addressing water shortage, in cities like Karachi, said Abbas, was through exploiting the riverine corridors of active floodplains.

“The Indus has 6.5 km of flood plain on either side which has sweet sand under which is the cleanest mineral water you can get. Most of the big cities are not more than 3km away from the river bed. All that needs to be done is to pump that water up from the depth of 300 to 400 feet using, say solar energy, and supply it to the cities through pipes,” explained the hydrologist.

But what about the Shah’s village in the delta?

“It is far, about 200 km from the river,” agreed Abbas, conceding the people in the delta urgently needed to be supplied with drinking water.

“It would require a much longer pipeline, but would still be cheaper to transport the same water that way,” he said.

According to him, there is anywhere from 350 to 380 MAF of water available in the riverine aquifer. “We Pakistanis need at the most 15 or a maximum of 20 MAF/year, (this is excluding water for agriculture) to meet our needs. It is a much cheaper option at two to three billion dollars than a dam costing 17 billion dollars!”

Throughout my ten years working in international development and climate policy, I’ve mostly heard colleagues talk about the private sector as if it was this intangible, multifaceted medusa with its own business lingo that is impossible for us policy experts to tackle: “the ‘private sector’ needs a return on investment in order to act on climate” or “the ‘private sector’ does not have the right incentives, but we need ‘private’ capital to solve this crisis”

First, we need to untangle whowe are talking about when we refer to “the private sector”. Are we talking about multinational corporations, wealthy investors, banks, entrepreneurs?

Secondly, unless we approach these actors with the problem, invite them to the discussion table, and hear them out, we will certainly never know the best way to get their interests aligned with climate solutions.

On the other hand, UN organisation and multilateral climate and environment funds interact almost entirely with public institutions and governments. So, when it comes to raising the bar on contributions to the Paris Agreement, climate change adaptation, and accessing climate finance, it seems the ball falls into the governments’ court.

We hear the usual refrain: “Governments need to mainstream climate risk into development policies” or “Governments need to act” or “Heads of State need to meet to raise ambition on NDCs [ Nationally Determined Contributions that countries made to the Paris Agreement]”

But will Government officials shaking hands and signing project proposals magically solve the climate crisis?

Here’s an idea: create a robust business case – whether it is by showing returns on investments or economic losses due to inaction – for profit-seeking actors to financially back up an NDC or National Adaptation Plan (NAP) and activate most of the domestic heavy-lifting that is needed to make these plans a reality.

In Latin America, we see an urgent need for public-private collaboration regarding action on climate change. As far as climate justice goes, the region is on par with most African and Asian peers: their contribution to global warming is less than that of USA and Europe.

However, the mega-biodiverse region remains highly vulnerable to climate change, economic growth is fuelling more carbon emissions, and the need for climate-resilient development is vital.

Despite a growing economy, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Latin America is growing at a slower rate than previously anticipated and well below growth rates of other regions, largely due to tightening of global financial conditions and lower commodity prices.

Low investment in human capital and entrepreneurship means economic inequality and a vulnerable middle class continues to be an issue in the region, a region that is already over-dependent on natural resources.

This socio-economic situation is further exacerbated by climate change related catastrophic events, changes in rainfall patterns and in temperatures. It is projected that a temperature rise of 2.5°C could have a negative impact on the Latin American GDP of 1.5 to 5 percent.

To make matters worse, grant and donor funding from multilateral climate and environmental finance sources are on a downward trajectory in the region, partly due to its “middle income” status; meaning governments are expected to use non-grant instruments to mitigate emissions or adapt to climate change.

The bleak reality is that we can no longer rely on grant-funded projects to cut down emissions or urgently adapt to the already devastating effects of the climate crisis.

But, remember the “private sector”? What is the contribution of wealthy investors, small entrepreneurs, and banks to this puzzle? Should they care? Is the region ready?

The good news in Latin America is that opportunities for private capital investment, which has significantly grown in recent years (for example, venture capital investment jumped from US $500M in 2016 to US $2 Billion in 2018 in the region) is at an all-time high.

There is also a growing sense of business opportunity amongst regional, national and private banks, investors, and entrepreneurs who understand the implications of climate risks in their value chains, operations, and portfolios.

Impact investors are financing reforestation initiatives in Mexico and climate-resilient productive landscapes in Honduras. Banks are developing innovative and flexible financial instruments to support small producers in rural Costa Rica protect their water resources through ecosystem-based adaptation.

Honey and cocoa cooperatives in Guatemala have established climate-resilient value chains by understanding the outstanding risks of climate change to their businesses. UNDP has served as a connector for these partnerships and supported on-the-ground projects which are the vehicles for these fascinating initiatives.

Taking advantage of the NDC and NAP processes, policy makers are approaching businesses, corporations and investors to see how they can contribute to finance the implementation of such plans.

Such is the case of Uruguay, Ecuador and Chile, where UNDP and its partners – including Global Environment Facility (GEF) and Green Climate Fund (GCF) — have been instrumental.

With the Latin America and Caribbean Climate Week (concluding August 23), including the Regional NDC Dialogues organised by UNDP in partnership with UNFCCC, we have another opportunity to welcome the private sector to the discussion table.

Regional and national banks, NGOs, think-tanks and consulting firms will all convene in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil, along with government representatives from across the region, to find ways of working together to fight climate change.

The special report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on climate and land, launched last week, makes it clear that without drastic changes in land use, agriculture and human diets, we will fall significantly short of targets to hold global temperature rise below 1.5°C.

Agriculture and food systems are identified as they key drivers of land degradation and desertification, with carbon emissions and extractive activities affecting 75 per cent of the Earth’s land surface. Now, as forests, food, and farming become the next frontier in the climate emergency, there is an urgent need to accelerate creative and effective solutions.

Each Beacons of Hope is disrupting the status quo and regenerating landscapes, enhancing livelihoods, restoring people’s health and wellbeing, reconnecting with Indigenous and cultural knowledge, and more, in order to achieve a resilient food future.

There is an opportunity to learn from these initiatives, as well as apply those learnings to facilitate and accelerate more food systems transformations.

The report makes the case for why we must pinpoint the drivers of change and seize the opportunities they bring. Climate change is called out as the predominant overriding challenge facing Beacons of Hope and is identified as a key driver of change across food systems.

An awareness of the health impacts of current food systems and the desire to improve community health and well-being also emerged as important drivers of change across many Beacons of Hope. As well, migration and immigration – the movement of people from rural to urban areas, as well as across borders – was found to significantly impact agriculture and health outcomes.

Yet, though food systems are vulnerable and complex, this report makes clear that they can be transformed to provide the people- and nature-based climate solutions we urgently need to address a multitude of issues – from climate emergency, urbanization, and the need for healthier and more sustainable diets.

In Andhra Pradesh, India

In particular, the report details that we need to accelerate agroecological approaches as a way to achieve transformation with many Beacons of Hope putting agroecological principles at the core of their work and their vision of the future.

Take for example how the Climate Resilient Zero Budget Natural Farming (ZBNF) initiative in Andhra Pradesh, India, promotes food resilience through traditional, chemical-free farming and agroecological processes and plans to scale from 180,000 farmers today to a massive 6 million by 2024.

Both these Beacons of Hope challenge the dominant narrative around food production that pressures national governments to privilege industrialized agriculture and foreign investment over local natural resource management through agroecology.

They also demonstrate that knowledge transfer and skills training, through farmer-to-farmer mentoring, is fundamental to not only building the capacity of farmers and communities over time, but to also challenge top-down approaches to reform and/or single-focused interventions that can cause unintended consequences.

As forests, food, and farming become the next frontier in the climate emergency, there is an urgent need to accelerate creative and effective solutions

Another of the Beacons of Hope – Agricultures Network (AN) is producing regional and global magazines that put farmers at the center of the development of agriculture, and thereby, is facilitating knowledge co-creation between farmer communities, researchers, civil society actors, and others.

Crucially, AN brings to life how sustainable food production also: reduces inequality; fosters healthy society, soil, and environment; and reduces youth unemployment.

Another key takeaway from the report is that new market mechanisms should be identified, developed, and supported by policy and practice. Environmental and social externalities should be internalized by policy and markets in order to balance the playing field on which initiatives addressing sustainability are currently disadvantaged.

This is something that was done, in part, at the Community Markets for Conservation (COMACO) in Zambia. Established in 2009, this Beacon of Hope channels market incentives to rural economies, promoting income generation, biodiversity conservation, and food security by training poachers to be farmers and farmers to be stewards of the land.

Now, thanks to this initiative, the farmers involved are able to grow their own food and create a livelihood outside of elephant hunting, which benefits the environment as well as the health of the smallholder farmers and their families.

Ultimately, there’s little doubt that we need systemic change, new policies, and a shift in power dynamics in order to realize a safe, resilient, and fair food future. We need to see systems-thinking in order to facilitate transformative processes in place-based, contextual ways.

Equally, we need to see long-term thinking, and creative partnerships and investment from across the private sector, civil society, and government committed to transforming food systems. Only then can we ensure that the negative externalities are minimized and positive benefits — economic, social, ecological, and cultural — are enhanced and properly valued.

The Beacons of Hope show us that transformation is not only possible, but is already happening. This creates space for hope, possibility, and opportunity through the groundswell of people transforming our food systems in beneficial, dynamic, and significant ways, through nature- and people-based solutions accelerating meaningful food systems transformations at this critical time.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/forests-food-farming-next-frontier-climate-emergency/feed/0Women Pastoralists Feel Heat of Climate Changehttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/women-pastoralists-feel-heat-climate-change/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=women-pastoralists-feel-heat-climate-change
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/women-pastoralists-feel-heat-climate-change/#respondWed, 14 Aug 2019 08:56:16 +0000Sharon Birch-Jeffreyhttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=162862For many people, climate change is about shrinking glaciers, rising sea levels, longer and more intense heatwaves, and other extreme and unpredictable weather patterns. But for women pastoralists—livestock farmers in the semi-arid lands of Kenya—climate change has forced drastic changes to everyday life, including long and sometimes treacherous journeys to get water. Faced with an […]

Members of the Samburu tribe in Kenya. Samburu women pastoralists are affected by climate change.

By Sharon Birch-Jeffrey, Africa RenewalNAIROBI, Aug 14 2019 (IPS)

For many people, climate change is about shrinking glaciers, rising sea levels, longer and more intense heatwaves, and other extreme and unpredictable weather patterns. But for women pastoralists—livestock farmers in the semi-arid lands of Kenya—climate change has forced drastic changes to everyday life, including long and sometimes treacherous journeys to get water.

Faced with an increasingly dry climate, women pastoralists now must spend much more time searching for water. That takes time away from productive economic activities, reinforcing the cycle of poverty.

A marginalized group

“Women are the ones who fetch water and firewood. Women are the ones who prepare food. Women are the ones who take care of not just their own children but also the young ones of their animals as well,” Agnes Leina, a Kenyan human rights activist and pastoralist, told Africa Renewal.

Leina established the Il’Laramatak Community Concerns organisation in 2011, because women pastoralists have inadequate land rights, are excluded from community leadership and are often not involved in decision making, despite the responsibilities they shoulder.

This year, Leina was invited to the Commission on the Status of Women at UN headquarters in New York, an opportunity she used to promote the rights of the Maasai, seminomadic pastoralists of the Nilotic ethnic group in parts of northern, central and southern Kenya.

Climate change has made their situation worse, she says.

“Women are the ones who fetch water and firewood. Women are the ones who prepare food. Women are the ones who take care of not just their own children but also the young ones of their animals as well,” Leina’s organisation addresses the loss of earnings women incur due to climate change by creating programmes that teach them how to make and sell beads, mats, and milk products. It also helps foster girls’ resilience by giving them the tools to set goals for themselves.

She says it used to take her about 30 minutes to fetch 20 litres of water from a river not far from her mother’s home, which was hardly enough to wash clothes and utensils and take a bath. That was until the river started receding.

The time she spent fetching water increased to “one hour, then two hours because, of course, there was no water and so many of us lined up for the little that was available. Then suddenly it completely dried up.”

Now, she says, “You have to travel to another river, which is like one hour’s walk, to fetch water.”

As a result, many girls between ages 14 and 16 run the risk of being attacked by wild animals or becoming victims of sexual assault while searching for water. They have no time to do their homework and, for fear of being punished, they miss school, she explains.

Other girls, discouraged by these realities, “settle for a man in town who has water and then marry him,” Leina admits with regret.

Agnes Leina.

Climate change also increases the pressure for child marriages. In pastoralist communities, livestock is a status symbol. Losing cattle because the land is too arid for them to survive may compel a father to offer his young daughter’s hand in marriage in exchange for more cows as a bride price.

Africa is highly vulnerable to climate change. The UN Environment (UNE) projects that some countries’ yields from rain-fed agriculture will have been reduced by half by next year. Countries hard hit by land degradation and desertification include Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger.

“Most African women depend on rain-fed livelihood systems like farming and livestock keeping. Therefore, any shift in climate patterns has a significant impact on women, especially those living in rural areas,” concurs Fatmata Sessay, UN Women regional policy advisor on climate-smart agriculture for East and Southern Africa Region. UN Women’s mandate is to advance gender equality and women’s empowerment.

Globally, nearly 200 million nomadic pastoralists make their livelihoods in remote and harsh environments where conventional farming is limited or not possible, according to the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).

Glo.be, the online magazine of the Belgian Federal Public Service’s international development aid programme, reports that Kenyan pastoralists are responsible for up to 90% of the meat produced in East Africa. Kenya’s livestock sector contributes 12% to the country’s gross domestic product, according to the World Bank.

Therefore, a changing climate has serious implications for the country’s economy.

In 2014, Kenya’s Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries, with support from the International Livestock Research Institute and the World Bank, began a livestock insurance programme for vulnerable pastoralists. That programme has provided some relief to women pastoralists.

Technology to the rescue

UN Women is also mobilizing efforts to secure land tenure for women. It is working with the Standard Bank of Africa to help African women overcome barriers in the agriculture sector such as providing access to credit.

Technology is key to saving the water that disappears after a torrential rainfall, says Leina. Windmill technology, for instance, could allow women to access water 300 feet underground. The snag, she explains, is that it’s priced out of the reach of women pastoralists. She hopes authorities can help.

Houses in some rural areas of Kenya have thatched roofs that cannot channel water to household water tanks in the way that zinc rooftops can. Commercial water trucks can fill up household tanks for a fee of up to $60 per tank, but most rural households cannot afford that much.

The situation for women pastoralists is grim, which is why Leina hopes raising awareness of how climate change is threatening their livelihoods may get increased attention—and support—of the Kenyan government and its international partners.